Prime movers of Agriculture!

It is good that the clamour for Nigerians to return to agriculture from the Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration of 1976 has been sustained by successive government. However, the problem with most of the call to return to agriculture is that those clamouring for such end with the thought of exporting the agricultural produce, this I disagree with. The question is ‘who are the farmers?’ because most times we want everybody to go back to the farm and if I understand what we are saying we are simply encouraging subsistence farming which from age past have never reduce unemployment or increase government revenue. What types of agriculture should we then do?

We should look beyond subsistence and commercial farming; we should instead focus on industrial farming which are processing and transformation of agricultural produce. That will drive the agricultural sector. The problem is that we think farming is an end but the truth is that it is a means to an end. Maybe because I studies Food Science and Technology, I understand what we call the prime movers of agriculture. We should be interested in industrial agriculture. What do I mean by industrial agriculture? Simple, producing with our local industries in mind. If we succeed in one crop, we can keep expanding to other crops and if our local production can no longer meet up to the demand of our local industries, we can import. The truth is that most time, the countries we export those agricultural produce to do make over 5 times what we made, so what’s the point of exporting when we can make all the money here.  

In my previous articles titled ‘increase the value!’ and ‘get information at all cost!’ I made it clear we should add value to our agricultural products before exporting them. What I am saying in clarity is that we should look beyond exporting our agricultural products to establishing industries that work with our agricultural product. We would have succeeded in creating a value chain that will have created enough employment for the bulk of our currently unemployed. Government revenues will have also increased because it will not just be from the farmers but from the industries and not just from the industries but also from workers of those industries as well as consumers through VAT. Social crimes will reduce because people will be gainfully employed, and government will have less people to be directly involved with in terms of financial burdens.

So the next time you or anyone wants to tell people to go back to agriculture, let it not end with the thought of exporting the raw products so as to receive forex but with the local industries in mind.